


Emergency Contact

by wildlingoftarth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Second Chances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:02:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28506408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildlingoftarth/pseuds/wildlingoftarth
Summary: "There must be some mistake," she’d said when she received the phone call earlier in the day, but the heavily-accented voice from the other end assured her she was listed as Jaime’s only emergency contact. They hadn't spoken in a year, and Brienne hadn't even known he'd left King's Landing.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 49
Kudos: 243
Collections: JB Festive Festival Exchange Stocking Stuffers 2020





	Emergency Contact

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SeeThemFlying](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeeThemFlying/gifts).



> For the incredibly talented, prolific and kind SeeThemFlying, who prompted hurt/comfort and second try at a relationship.  
> I’ve never done hurt/comfort and I’m not positive this is even that, but I tried.  
> Here's my typical disclaimer that I don't know anything about anything, including how head injuries work.  
> Unbowed, unbent, unbeta’d.  
> I hope you enjoy this, SeeThemFlying! Happy New Year!

Brienne jiggled her foot and chewed on her thumbnail as she looked out the window of the little plane taking her over the Narrow Sea to Pentos. She was lucky to get the last flight of the day from King’s Landing to Pentos, although it would get her there later than she’d like. She hoped the hospital would still allow her into Jaime’s room, as desperate as she was to see him with her own eyes despite their insistence that he was alive and as well as could be expected after a fall from such a height. 

_"There must be some mistake,"_ she’d said when she received the phone call earlier in the day, but the heavily-accented voice from the other end assured her she was listed as Jaime’s only emergency contact. They hadn’t spoken in a year, although their breakup was as amicable as she could have hoped, and she hadn’t even known he’d left King’s Landing, much less made his way to Pentos to work on an archaeological dig. 

Brienne pushed down her rising panic as the hospital explained he’d suffered a fall and was unconscious, and she needed to be there to discuss his treatment and make medical decisions on his behalf. She’d asked about his family, but they’d reiterated that she was the only one listed as an emergency contact. So she had used her shaking hands to book the soonest flight she could find, called her neighbor to ask if she could feed the cat, and told her boss there’d been a family emergency and she’d be working remotely for a few days. 

Although she and Jaime were no longer together, the thought of him waking up in that hospital room alone made her heart ache. He deserved someone there in his time of need, and she knew he would do whatever it took to be with her if she was the one in this situation. 

Two hours later, she climbed out of the cab from the airport and rushed into the hospital, stopping at the front desk.

“I’m here to see Jaime Lannister. I’m his–” she hesitated for a moment. “Emergency contact.”

The receptionist nodded and typed something into her computer, then asked for Brienne’s ID. “Third floor, room 306,” the receptionist said as she handed Brienne’s ID back. Brienne thanked her and walked quickly to the elevator. 

Her heart raced and mind swirled as she rode up to the third floor. She had tried hard to put Jaime out of her mind over the past year, but today had brought all those suppressed thoughts to the surface. She hadn’t allowed herself to admit that she hoped their last goodbye wasn’t truly the end, but she never could have imagined their reunion would be like this. She wrung her hands and watched the floor numbers change excruciatingly slowly until the elevator finally reached the third floor. 

The doors slid open and Brienne stepped out, her breath hitching in her throat and her stomach roiling as she walked to Jaime’s room. She paused at the door and tried to calm her breathing before pushing it open. 

Jaime laid on the bed with an oxygen tube in his nose, wires and lines running from beeping machines and monitors to his body and back again. Without all that, he might have just looked like he was sleeping, his face soft and relaxed, like she’d seen him so many times in the bed they’d shared nearly every night for a year. 

Brienne let out a sound somewhere between a gasp and a sob, dropped her bag and kneeled beside the bed, taking Jaime’s dry, warm hand in her own. She pressed the back of it to her lips and felt tears pricking at her eyes. Normally she would have blinked them back, so used to being the strong one in every room, but Jaime was the only person she'd ever shown her true self, so she let them come. 

She was sniffling and wiping her face when the doctor came in. "Ms. Tarth?" she asked, looking at her clipboard. Brienne stood up and nodded, pulling herself together as best she could. "Thank you for being here on such short notice. Mr. Lannister has quite a severe contusion, but the good news is that his brain activity has been steadily increasing, so we expect him to wake in the next day or so."

"Oh, good. That's good." She felt some of the fear melting away at the doctor's reassuring words, and at the noises of approval she made when looking at the monitors Jaime was attached to. The doctor told her she'd be back by in a few hours and patted her shoulder before leaving the room. 

Brienne sat on the chair next to the bed, opened her laptop and attempted to work, but closed it soon after when she realized she was just reading the same line of the same email over and over. She looked at Jaime instead, thinking about all the questions she’d ask him when he woke, all the things she’d never gotten the chance to say to him.

Her eyelids began getting heavy, the emotional turmoil of the day finally beginning to take its toll on her. She retrieved a blanket out of the little closet in the room and reclined the chair, then fell into a restless sleep.

***

Brienne woke the next morning to dull gray light leaking in through the blinds and Jaime's monitors beeping softly and steadily. She stretched, rubbed a crick out of her neck, and turned toward the bed to find Jaime's green eyes open and staring right at her. 

"Jaime!" she gasped, jumping out of the chair and kneeling at his bedside. She took his hand in both of hers and squeezed, the feeling of him squeezing back filling her with relief. 

"You're here." His voice was thick and raspy from disuse and slightly distorted from the oxygen tube still in his nose. 

"Of course I'm here. You needed me."

He smiled at her, a look she’d missed so much it made her chest hurt. 

“How long was I out?” he asked, looking around the room.

“A few days, I think.”

“A few days? You’ve been here that long?”

“I just got here last night.”

He squeezed her hand again. “I don’t deserve you.”

Just then, the nurse came in and let out a shriek at seeing Jaime awake. She called the doctor on her radio and fussed around Jaime, forcing Brienne to let go of his hand and sit back in the chair while they read his monitors and charts and poked and prodded at him. 

After a full day of scans and tests, Jaime was cleared to go home with strict instructions for Brienne to monitor him for signs of disorientation and wake him every two hours in the night and call them immediately if he lost consciousness again. 

She walked Jaime to the door of the hospital with her arm looped through his and helped him into the cab despite his insistence that he hadn't broken his legs. 

When she slid into the backseat next to him, he grabbed her hand like it was the most natural thing in the world. They spent the short cab ride in silence, although Brienne had a million questions for him. They could wait.

The cab pulled up to a small, shoddy-looking apartment building a few minutes later. Jaime looked at her and shrugged apologetically. “It’s not much, but it’s home. For now, at least.”

They walked up one flight of stairs to Jaime’s apartment. He unlocked the door and swung it open, gesturing Brienne inside. She walked in and looked around – it was obviously pre-furnished with shabby, mismatched furniture, and everything else was packed up in cardboard boxes. “Did you just move in?” she asked after he’d shut the door behind him.

“Moving out, actually. My semester in the field is almost done. I’ll be back in King’s Landing next month.”

“Semester?” 

"Yeah. I thought a lot about what you said when we broke up…"

Brienne winced. "I'm really sorry, Jaime. About all of that."

Jaime held up a hand. "You were right. I _did_ need to grow up. I _did_ need to get out from under my father's thumb. So right after that, I quit the company. Cleared out my trust fund before he could officially disown me. I enrolled in the archaeology program at KLU and…here I am. Next semester I’m on campus, and then they’ll send me somewhere else to work in the field again.”

“Oh. Wow. I’m...really proud of you.” She could have sworn she saw Jaime’s eyes mist over. “Is that why I’m listed as your emergency contact?”

Jaime chuckled bitterly. “Yeah...sorry about that. But my family and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms. You were the only person I could think of that I trusted enough.”

She was quiet, then, the weight of his words pushing down on her. She busied herself helping Jaime get settled, searching in the refrigerator for something she could make him to eat while he showered. 

“Make sure the water isn’t too hot. And get out immediately if you start to feel dizzy.”

Jaime chuckled. “I know you’d catch me if I fainted, though.” She hid her burning cheeks at the thought of Jaime, naked and wet, pressed against her body.

When he walked out of the bathroom in new clothes, sweatpants and a soft-looking t-shirt, his damp hair curling around his ears and at the back of his neck, she chided herself for her urge to run to him, take him in her arms and kiss him senseless. 

Brienne told him to sit down on the couch and brought him a plate with a quesadilla. “It’s all I could scrounge up in the refrigerator.” She shrugged and sat down next to him.

“Thank you. For everything. For being here.”

“It was nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. You’re the only person I know who would drop everything to fly across an ocean for their ex.”

“You’re not just my ex, Jaime. I still – care about you.”

Jaime looked like he was about to say something, but went back to eating. Brienne made sure he ate everything, then got him a glass of water and his prescription pain pill. 

“How does your head feel?” 

Jaime swallowed the pill down, wincing. “Hurts.”

“Well, hopefully that’ll help. You can have another one in four hours.”

“Always so diligent.”

“Shut up.” She couldn’t help smiling at the easy way they fell back into their banter.

“The doctor said those would make you drowsy,” she said after he yawned for the third time. “You should probably get to bed. Do you have any extra blankets? I’ll sleep out here on the couch.”

Jaime looked at her with incredulity. “Brienne. You’re not sleeping on the couch when you have to wake me up every two hours. Just sleep in my bed. I promise I’ll be a gentleman.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about that...”

“You're worried you won’t be able to resist ravishing a poor wounded man?”

“Okay, I’m leaving. Good luck with the head injury.”

Jaime laughed, a bright sound that filled her chest with warmth. “Sorry, that was uncouth of me. But really...you’re already doing so much for me. Don’t make it any harder on yourself.”

Brienne acquiesced and moved her bag into Jaime’s room, empty besides the bed and one small bedside table, his clothes having been moved out of the closet into boxes and bags. 

She changed into her pajamas in his bathroom and came back out to find him already asleep, rolled to the middle of the bed, his arm outstretched into what would be her space. She shook her head fondly and moved his arm out of the way, slipping into the bed, unable to avoid pressing her body along the length of his. Jaime snuffled and flung his arm over her stomach, burying his nose into her neck. Her body’s immediate reaction mortified her, but she breathed deep and reminded herself she had a job to do tonight. She set a two-hour alarm on her phone and tried to relax despite the uneasy yet familiar weight of Jaime’s arm slung across her. 

The first time her alarm went off, she woke immediately and shook Jaime awake gently. He groaned and fluttered his eyes open.

“What’s your name?” she asked quietly.

“Jaime Lannister.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in my apartment, in bed.”

She smiled and nodded. “Good.” They both fell back into sleep, facing toward each other, their forehead a hair’s breadth from touching. 

***

“What’s your name, and where are you?”

Jaime Lannister. I’m in bed in my apartment.”

***

“What’s your name, and where are you?”

“Jaime Lannister. I’m in bed with Brienne Tarth.” Brienne blushed even in her groggy state and hid her face in his chest, his arms wrapping around her and lulling her back into sleep.

***

The fourth and blessedly last time her alarm went off, Brienne slowly opened her eyes to the first rays of the morning sun struggling through the blinds. She shook Jaime’s shoulder and watched his eyes blink open, then fixed her with a gaze so tender it made her heart skip.

“What’s your name, and where are you?” she asked softly.

“Jaime Lannister. I’m in bed with the love of my life.”

Brienne inhaled shakily and brought her hand to his face. “Oh, Jaime.”

He laid his hand over top of hers. “I missed you so much, Brienne. I had to stop myself from calling or texting you a thousand times over this past year, but I knew you wanted to figure out who you were without me. So, did you?”

Her thumb stroked across his stubbled jaw. “I figured out that I’m good by myself, but I’m even better with you.”

He turned his head and pressed a kiss to her palm. “I was planning on calling you when I got back to King’s Landing. To ask you for coffee.”

“We can have coffee here. If you have some.”

Jaime chuckled. “I think I can scrounge some up. So, when I get back…”

“Let’s try again,” she said immediately, never more sure of anything in her life.

Jaime grinned a blinding grin and moved closer, looking at her lips and back up at her eyes, questioning. Brienne closed the rest of the distance and pressed her lips to his, feather-light. A warmth grew in her chest and swelled throughout her body. She pulled back and blinked, a tear sliding down her face, this one born of happiness and hope. He’d made it through the night, and now they had the rest of their lives to wake up together.

“I love you.” He swiped her tear away with a thumb, his words sounding easy, natural.

“I love you, too. But you really didn’t have to fall into a pit to make me realize that.”

He laughed and kissed her again, firmer and more insistent this time, and she had to force herself to pull back from his warm, strong grip and roll out of bed. 

“I might be your girlfriend again, but I’m still your nurse. You need another pain pill. And I need to make us that coffee.”

“Thank you for taking care of me. I know it’s rotten work sometimes.” 

Brienne paused in the doorway, studying his face, and smiled.

“Not to me. Not if it’s you.”


End file.
